How do you say, "I'm sorry"?

As long as you have given your partner a sincere apology, I think the best thing you can do is to try to forgive yourself for what happened. Your partner forgave you, and would probably like to go on enjoying time with you. He doesn't want you to feel worse than you already do. If you want to do something special for him, go ahead, but I would do it because you want to, and because you want to show him that he is special. I wouldn't do it "to make it up to him" because that could just bring up the unpleasant event again instead of keeping the focus on the awesome thing you did for him (or that you did together).

Forgive yourself, and start enjoying your life together again, apart from what happened.

In my experience, most people find it extremely difficult to admit they acted in any way at all inappropriate. I'm not even sure from your description that your behavior was at all egregious but I'd have no problem forgiving you.

Everyone says it in their own way. But sometimes it's what's not said. I fight a few bad habits I picked up from 5 years of hell with my ex. He was abusive in so many ways, that I always fought back. After 5 years of saying anything that was on my mind, it was hard to stop, think, and just not say some things. When couples argue, and later try to apologize, many are tempted to not just say "I'm sorry." But to explain why they are sorry, and include things like "If you hadn't..." or "Well you did this...", but that just fires it back up. For my husband, I try to keep it simple (as he does for me), and just say something suiting along the lines of "I'm really sorry, I know I was wrong too (as we usually both admit we were both wrong in out own ways) and I didn't want to upset you." He tells me something along the same lines, and we give ourselves time to calm down about it. If it was an issue either of us really feels like we need to talk about at all (only to avoid future problems, otherwise it's not worth bringing up), we wait a day and keep it simple. We also try to word things better. Instead of making it a demand, we make a a request. For example, "I have to tell you hun, I really am sorry for yesterday, and I will work on ____, but if you feel a certain way about something I do, please, tell me, instead of letting it irritate you until you're upset with me. I'd rather work on something instead of upsetting you, but I can't if you don't let me know something's bothering you." Lines like that make the point very clear, and pretty short. So they work for us getting our message across and the other not getting upset about the other nagging or dragging it out needlessly. I hope that might help someone

by giving him a hug and a kiss and telling him I AM SORRY

Thanks everyone! I feel all warm and fuzzy now I'm happy to report we were able to move past this but it was the first truly dark, rough place we hit. I guess my actions stirred up some old feelings and issues for him that I didn't realize were even an issue. He owned them and explained why he felt the way he did. I owned my actions as well and talked about some things that were on my mind too.

I think the bottom line is that we both had some baggage that contributed to this event being the issue that stirred the baggage to the forefront. We made a plan for ourselves individually and as a couple to set things right and we are back in a really good place. Really good!

Talking, time together, and laughing seem to have been the best ways to say sorry and rebuild better and stronger.